How to survive your terrible office, according to a Stanford professor

Bob Sutton

Does your office resemble "Lord of the Flies"? Here's how to cope, according to Stanford professor Robert Sutton (pictured).

Some office cultures are like something out of "Lord of the Flies."

From bro-tastic party environments to hyper-competitive, treacherous workplaces, when a toxic atmosphere falls over your company, it can have drastic effects on your own well-being.

Robert Sutton, a professor of management at Stanford University and author of "The No Asshole Rule," has seen this first hand in his research for the upcoming book "The Asshole Survival Guide."

"If you're in one of those extreme situations - they call them mobbing situations - when a------- are everywhere, basically, there are little things you can do temporarily," he told Business Insider.

However, he said that people stick with terrible workplace environments at their own peril.

"When I talk to people who come out of those situations, they almost always had to fight back to survive," he said. "When you think of 'Lord of the Flies,' who got killed? It was the people who couldn't fight back."

Here are some tips from Sutton on how to survive working in a terrible office: